Frank commentary from an unretired call girl

Marching Up Their Own Arses

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. – H.L. Mencken

When a person is so narcissistically absorbed in his own ideas or beliefs that he is totally oblivious to reality, we say that he “has his head up his own arse.” But for some people, this expression is hardly strong enough; they pursue their own solipsistic interpretation of reality so aggressively and persistently as to actually undo whatever it is they’re trying to accomplish. In my late teens I coined the expression “marching up his own arse” to describe such a person, and it was the first thing I thought of when I read these three news items. The first one is from the September 17thLas Vegas Sun:

Christopher Baughman is a member of…the unit within vice that investigates crimes related to human trafficking and prostitution. He’s seen more than his fair share of gritty crime scenes and broken lives, some of which he’s documented in his new book, “Off the Street”…[Baughman says] “these guys are psychopaths. They have a whole lot to lose, and they are not stupid. These aren’t guys chasing down women in an alley for $10. We are talking about people making a ton of money…Early in [the] book, [I describe] a pimp pulling in a million dollars a year through only two women…and a million dollars can buy a very good defense attorney. If our team doesn’t cross every single T, we could lose that case…We have to do whatever it takes…trafficking and pimping are bigger issues in Las Vegas than anywhere else…You can hide in plain sight here. Where else can a 22-year-old drive down the street in a Maserati and nobody pays attention? We’ve sort of opened the door for a lot of bad people to come here…[He adds]…When people are talking about prostitution and victims of trafficking, guys use a lot of…derogatory terms. Officers do it, too…All that does is reinforce the lies the traffickers tell them, like that police don’t give a damn…

One would think that Las Vegas (where the evidence that legalization works better than criminalization is literally a few miles away, and where the independence of the vast majority of escorts should be obvious to anyone not hopelessly lost in the nether regions of his own alimentary canal) would be the last place in America where trafficking mythology and puerile “pimps and hos” masturbatory fantasies would find a receptive audience. But that grossly underestimates the dogged persistence with which some people promenade into their own rectal cavities. I literally laughed out loud at this pompous twit’s declaration that he knew of a “pimp” making a million dollars a year from two women; while it’s certainly possible for a busy and dedicated escort to make $500,000 in a year in Las Vegas, a woman who’s capable of that isn’t going to turn it all over to some man. Sorry, Chris; you’ll have to do the sigmoid strut alone because no hooker with a particle of self-respect is going to follow you.

It’s understandable that Cheesehead cops might be a bit less cosmopolitan than their Sin City brethren, but the Kafkaesque notion that one can stop an already-illegal activity merely by requiring a license for it is so wholly ludicrous that only a dedicated colonic processionary could fail to see the absurdity of it. This story comes to us from the September 18thLaCrosse Tribune:

…an ordinance being considered by city officials…[in LaCrosse, Wisconsin] would require escorts, dancers and some kinds of massage practitioners to obtain licenses for a fee. Police contend the license could deter prostitution while generating revenue for a cash-strapped city. “The city requires cab drivers and bartenders to obtain a license,” La Crosse Police Assistant Chief Rob Abraham said. “It seems reasonable we should regulate this industry also”…other Wisconsin municipalities [already] require a license for anyone who accompanies someone for a fee…[or offers] private dances and massages. Police want one thing to be clear: The ordinance won’t legalize prostitution. Anyone exchanging sex for money faces criminal charges.

Escorts and dancers advertising work in La Crosse…teeter on prostitution. They offer “pleasure” and “full body pampering” with semi-nude photographs…“This type of activity sometimes tries to guise as prostitution,” Abraham said. “We know through informants or tips these escorts aren’t doing legal escort activity.” But proving a prostitution deal can be tricky. Proving someone doesn’t have a license isn’t. “As soon as they open the door, they’re in violation,” said Jim Adlam, a police captain in Brookfield, a southeastern Wisconsin city that enacted an escort-license ordinance in 1991…

Similar ordinances elsewhere require applicants to submit fingerprints and photographs and pass a criminal history background check. No one has ever applied for the license, which requires a hefty $250 fee, since Brookfield passed the ordinance two decades ago, according to the city clerk’s office. But police there each year cite about 10 unlicensed escorts, most nabbed during stings…“I tell them, ‘You’ve been given an unbelievable deal in life. This is really prostitution,’” Brookfield Municipal Judge Jeffrey Warchol said…“We wish people would follow the ordinance,” Waukesha County Sheriff’s Lt. Neil Dussault said. “But people choose to go around the system because they know deep down what they’re doing is wrong.”

I’m not sure whether these officials are technically marching up their own arses; it seems more like they’re all marching up each others’ arses in a colossal daisy chain of rump-tramping. If they don’t require a license to go on dates, they’re right back where they started from because the cases are based on police testilying whether the charge is “prostitution” or “escorting without a license”. But that’s the essence of advancing up one’s own rear; the profound confusion which results is evident in the quotes from the “authorities” in this story. One says that strippers and escorts disguise their work as prostitution (the mind boggles), another tells whores that their work is “really prostitution” as though he believes they don’t know, and Solomon Lawhead at the end there pronounces that women don’t submit their fingerprints and real names so they can be harassed, persecuted and framed at will “because they know deep down what they’re doing is wrong.” Obviously, the concepts of “common sense” and “self-preservation” don’t exist in his universe. Hup, two, three, four…

I can’t tell whether the researcher in this September 20th story from The Local is traipsing up his own bum, but the prosecutor is certainly on an auto-anal expedition:

Prostitutes from Hungary are increasingly being sent to work in…Zurich, but they don’t see themselves as victims of trafficking, according to…Sascha Finger, a geographer…at the University of Bern…In most cases, the women were pushed onto the street by brothers, uncles, cousins or even husbands: “The women therefore don’t see themselves as human trafficking victims”…Most of [them] are Roma, a nomadic ethnic group often existing on the fringes of Hungarian society. “The women are sent to Switzerland by their families to earn hard cash to feed an extended family of up to 13 people, and often they have their own children,” he said…the women are also faced with serious problems in Switzerland. They generally don’t speak German and are often at the mercy of punters who occasionally fail to pay…they…are…often afraid of the police, their customers, and the challenges posed by living in Switzerland. “They feel illegal even though they are not doing anything illegal.“

Zurich prosecutor Silvia Steiner is also aware of the problems Hungarian prostitutes face in Switzerland. “The dilemma for me is that the women deny they are victims of human trafficking“…Steiner has previously managed to secure convictions…in the few cases she has brought to court, but in general the women refuse to push for an indictment. “Their fear of the perpetrators and their clans in Hungary is too great,“ she said.

So if a Swiss woman’s family pushes her to get an office job, is it “human trafficking”? What about if she “perpetrates” travel to Germany to get that job? What if a Hungarian woman is pushed by her family to work in a bank in Zurich? Does a job only count as “trafficking” if it involves sex? Does Ms. Steiner even consider the fact that among the Gypsies (the traditional name for the Roma) travelling is a way of life? Maybe they “deny they are victims of human trafficking” because they aren’t, and maybe the reason they’re afraid of the police and “feel illegal even though they are not doing anything illegal“ is because lawheads like Steiner keep trying to force them to betray their families for the sake of some vague political concept. But don’t expect her to recognize that; like the people who spout the amazingly stupid statements featured in my column of one year ago today, she’s far too busy marching up her own arse to pay any attention to reality.

Thanks, Mike; I must admit I was laughing pretty hard myself while writing some of the permutations. I would interpret “recto-cranial inversion” as synonymous with “head up arse”, though, rather than actually marching up there.

I’ve described this condition as “one in dire need of a cranialinterectumy.” Or perhaps, one suffering from such a condition. I don’t have a good enough grasp of greek and latin suffixes to know if I’m advocating the taking out of or observing the putting in.

Yes, my friend and I are laughing with you both this morning over coffee. Laughable presentation, but serious concerns with the stories.

The last reminds me of the case that I don’t know the name of where two kids denied repeatedly that they had been molested by their father. But, the mother was dating a lead detective so they brow beat the kids until they convinced them that they had suppressed the memories and the guy went to jail. 20 years later the kids came forward, and he was granted clemency.

Years ago – a lowly Sailor on a submarine was told he was the victim of hazing … but he didn’t feel that way about it – since he had actually ASKED to receive the hazing as a traditional submariner right of passage. The investigation that followed was relentless – with an extreme amount of pressure placed on this guy to report the names of his assailants (who were his friends). The guy ended up killing himself.

And a bit later – the Chief Of Naval Operations committed suicide also – and most people claim it was because of this kid’s case.

Pretty common in Europe for gals from East Europe to run off temporarily to virtually any European nation and do sex work. Their attitudes toward sex aren’t as kooky as ours are – so they don’t see it as a big deal as long as they are working somewhere where no one knows them.

i mean seriously – a girl in University in Romania will take the summer off – make her way to Germany – and do sex work for a few months before returning to school with her tuition in her purse like nothing ever happened.

She’s not being “trafficked” but, since she’s not really a “Pro” either and because she’s entering a different culture with a different language that she may not be well versed in – she’s bound to make a few mistakes in the beginning. Mistakes like – hooking up with someone that doesn’t pay … etc. But – isn’t that kind of an occupational hazard for any person who’s NEW to a business? Hell, you could open a hardware store and you’ll get ripped off a few times before you get smart about things. It’s a part of the learning process.

Maggie, these people are so far up their arses that they have an Adam’s Apple with nostrils!

…an ordinance being considered by city officials…[in LaCrosse, Wisconsin] would require escorts, dancers and some kinds of massage practitioners to obtain licenses for a fee.

Golly, this won’t be open to abuse – no siree!
Also on a related note: the amount of creepy pervy clients that “legit” massagers occasionally get means that it’ll be only a matter of time until one of them throws a false accusation and before you know it all the Helen Lovejoys of the world will be demanding a license for the ALL.

Precisely. It all goes back to the absurd Western notion that sex is somehow magically different from all other human activity. That’s why I think the single most important slogan for prostitutes’ rights is the simple but powerful “sex work is work.”

There are Americans and Brits who travel to Japan and make a living teaching English. They don’t make a lot of money, but just enough to pay the rent, buy some food, and make little trips over the weekend. They do this because they speak, read and write English fairly well, they speak, read and write Japanese enough, and they’ve always wanted to make an extended visit to Japan but can’t afford to unless they can make a little money while there.

Are they trafficked? If not, why not? And if not, then why is a Roma Gypsy doing sex work on the other side of a national border trafficked? Is it because she’s working to pay her bills and feed her family instead to finance travel for its own sake? Would a woman traveling around the world, financing her globe-trotting via prostitution, be a victim of human trafficking?

Seriously, do they really think any whore is going to willingly submit her photo, real name and fingerprints to the cops? That’s a ticket to harassment (and probably a few cop customers).

One of the big problems I was seeing in the industry just before I retired was he influx of amateurs. The internet had make hooking more accessible, and some women were giving it a try. They weren’t professional, they weren’t too knowledgeable about what they were getting into, and they could often get into trouble.

It’s possible for large Las Vegas escort agencies to gross a million a year, though of course the enormous cost of advertising cuts into that. And I’m willing to bet that some of them even net a million a year. But those are escort services, not “pimps”, and they have dozens of independent contractors (not “trafficked girls”) working for them. Surely the cops know this, and it’s possible Baughman isn’t marching up his own arse at all but simply lying his arse off in order to profit from the “sex trafficking” hysteria like everyone else. As Tom Petty said, “I can’t decide which is worse.”

It seems self evident that the autorities are, to fuel&profit from the “trafficking” model, taking as many people as they can hook in on any excuse, turning them into human play-doh *using perjury, extortion and legal force* and stuffing them through the “human trafficking template” to justify legalised highway robbery.

They *have* to make their own victims because otherwise the general population would quickly catch on that there are next to no actual trafficking victims (was it <0.29% of all sex workers, Maggie?) to justify the millions they have been given in public money.

so, from what I gather from the article and from the comments (excluding the giggling posts about rectal maneuvers), you don’t believe in such things as “trafficking” or that women/girls required by their families to enter into prostitution are coerced into the field. How about when parents sell their daughters? Still perfectly ok?

Like many people, you are pretending that sex magically makes everything different. Women whose families pressure them into prostitution are NO DIFFERENT from those who pressure them into any other kind of work, especially in countries like Switzerland and Hungary where prostitution is legal. If it’s “wrong” for a family to push a woman to do sex work, then it’s also “wrong” when she’s pushed to get an office job. So is the average American man a “human trafficker” in your mind? Because most men expect their wives to work nowadays.

Laura Agustín has pointed out that while men who cross borders to work are usually labeled “illegal immigrants”, women who do so are called “trafficked”; that’s why there is the dual fallacy that most illegal migrant workers are men and most “trafficking victims” are women. The truth is, they both cross the borders for the same reasons, but the paternalistic view of woman as helpless victim encourages women’s migration to be viewed as a separate phenomenon; this is exactly the same delusion which gave rise to the “white slavery” hysteria of 100 years ago. I suggest you read my columns of June 22nd, 25th and 29th and also Dr. Agustín’s blog, starting with this reprint of an article from the beginning of the current trafficking hysteria in 2001.

Does actual, bona fide slavery exist? Certainly, and it always has. But the numbers are not “growing”, as alarmists would have it; it is now a very small phenomenon. It’s just that sheltered middle-class white Westerners with silly beliefs about sex work and pie-in-the-sky notions of “fairness” refuse to understand that just because they can’t imagine themselves ever doing a certain job doesn’t mean it’s unthinkable for everyone, and in fact may be the best alternative. Do I consider slavery morally defensible? No, and I’ve spoken out against it in this blog many times. But it’s ludicrous for you to define all animals as “human” in your own mind and then call me a cannibal for eating a hamburger. I’m against real slavery (such as parents selling minor children), not against freely-chosen (if difficult) jobs that fanatics wrongfully define as slavery when in fact they’re nothing of the kind.

It is possible for a top flight pimp to easily make a million dollars off 3 or 4 prostitutes. 2 could easily make $500,000. Oh and yes they will hand him over every dime it’s true. Also it won’t be by force but by choice. Not trafficked women but women who love truly love the pimp.

A good pimp inspires and teaches his women to make a lot of money. Most prostitutes without a pimp don’t make a lot of money may-be 50-100 grand a year tops which is like having a good paying regular job. Most quit after a few weeks or months and are in the closet about it so they never apply themselves to their full potential. A pimp inspires a woman to totally abandon the square life and the hypocritical square morals and go hard at being a “ho”. It is similar to someone joining the Marine Corp and going through basic training. Instead of being trained to kill they are trained to ho with a passion and energy that the average escort just doesn’t have.

Some women want to be part of a pimp’s stable and harem (especially bi-sexual woman) and have a man they can treat like a god and king. They want to live in a mansion and drive luxury cars like a Bentley, Rolls Royce or Maserati. This is the upscale pimp mind you the lower class ones aren’t even worth mentioning. Bottom line you have women who want to live that bling lifestyle and be some sort of pimp-hooker version legend of Bonnie and Clyde or I should say Tiffany, Candy, Princess, Bonnie and Clyde lol.

That Vegas cop should concentrate on thugs who force minors into sexual slavery or dangerous johns who assault and kill escorts and just make sure the successful pimp daddies and their adult consenting hooker “wives’ are paying some tax money.

But you’ve just proved my point, BP. What you’re describing isn’t “pimping” in the sense the cops and trafficking fanatics mean it, but simply polygamous marriage. If two or more people want to enter into such an arrangement, it isn’t my business and certainly not the state’s. What you’re talking about is the exact moral equivalent of an actress with a “manager” husband, or that of a successful female politician and her non-politician husband. I personally would never want a man who depended on me full-time like that, but my preferences are not binding on others, nor should they be.

Very true Maggie and I think there is only one major financial flaw in a conventional marriage, polygamous marriage or “mack daddy husband” and “escort-provider wives” common law marriage. This is the same flaw as in any marriage or relationship where one party handles the purse strings. The flaw is if the relationship goes sour the the party who doesn’t do the money managing can wind up leaving with little or nothing. We see this in conventional marriages where the woman is most likely the one to get the money and spoils and her ex-husband walks away with very little or nothing. In the pimp ho relationship it is the woman who usually walks away with little or nothing. We need to make it fair.

If a husband wants to hand over his paycheck to his wife and let her call the shots which is even traditional in some cases fine. If a woman wants to let her mack daddy have her earnings and manage them cool that’s OK too but there should be a system in place where if any party terminates or divorces from the relationship that no one leaves broke or near broke. This should be the case in any relationship whether it is a conventional marriage, a polygamous marriage or a pimp ho-escort marriage and even a gay or lesbian marriage. You can even have legal contracts like a pre-nupitial agreements made up when entering into a relationship. If you keep things fair then marriage and relationships including ones between pimps and their girls won’t have such a bad name where people are afraid to have a significant other. Sad but true!

Life is short we really need to treat each other better and be more fair to one another especially men and women. People have had such bad experiences in relationships and marriage that they are lonely, bitter, hurt and scared to try to hook up with someone. It is really sad.The battle of the sexes and genders is played out. We are human beings on this earth for a limited time which is our lifespan so let’s treat each other better especially your significant other.

Have you ever gone to Switzerland to see these Hungarian women? I have. Many of them are minors, they’re pretty much all under the control of pimps, they are forced to stand outside in sub-zero temperatures, they apparently aren’t using (out of pressure to make more money?) the condoms that social workers give them because they have a high abortion rate, and they are subjected to violence on a regular basis (see, for example, http://www.thelocal.ch/page/view/brutal-pimps-jail-sentence-upped-to-14-years). These are girls and young women from highly disadvantaged backgrounds with low levels of education and thus very few opportunities in Hungary. But the solution is not to traffic them into prostitution (yes, it’s trafficking, not ‘sex work migration’).

As for ‘Gypsies’ being travellers, the fact is that most Roma (what is used nowadays as it is not derogatory like ‘Gypsy’, just FYI) in Europe are and have for a while now in fact been sedentary. Roma travelling around in caravans is an old stereotype that only applies to a small minority these days.

The fact that you think a Julie Bindel propaganda piece constitutes “information” in anything but the broadest use of the term indicates exactly what your agenda is, as does your rather pompous “correction” of my language to a more PC term when I liberally use words like “whore” and “thug”. Furthermore, the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”, free human agency is not subject to the approval of others, and there are already laws in most civilized countries to protect legal minors without having to create activity-specific ones. Finally, no problem can be objectively examined when it is described with dysphemisms, exaggeration and bombast.

I was surprised to discover that the term “Gypsy” is actually applied to several groups of people, of which the Roma are only one. There are Irish Travelers and Dom and Banjara and of course Roma, and some others besides.

But the refs Maggie makes to a “Gypsy tribe of whores” is perfect, because it’s a group of “Gypsies” which isn’t misidentified or lumped in with other groups, but one that doesn’t exist at all.

As for Ms. Steiner and Hungarian Roma, the point is not, that she should have been considering, as you put it, Maggie, ‘the fact that among the Gypsies (the traditional name for the Roma) travelling is a way of life’, but the fact, that Roma are living under worsening conditions in Eastern Europe, being increasingly discriminated against, and when it comes to Hungary, being under the threat of the neofascist party Jobbik. For judging the extent of the danger they pose, one could for instance read http://www.channel4.com/news/hungary-jobbik-far-right-militias-jewish-congress .

So, even if indeed, those women in Switzerland are as badly off, as Ms. Steiner claims, they do prefer that to having their lives threatened back home.

I’ll go ahead and point out something obvious here: if “selling x in y” is “like selling burger in McDonald’s,” then there must be a HELL of a lot of x selling in y, because they sure do sell a HELL of a lot of burgers in McDonald’s.

Whorish Media

Maggie on Twitter

Boring but necessary legal stuff

All original content on this website (i.e. all of my columns, pages and anything else which I write myself) is protected under international copyright law as of the time it is posted; though you may link to it as you please or quote passages (as long as you attribute the quote to me), please do not reproduce whole columns without my express written permission. In other words, you have to say "pretty please with sugar on top" first, and then wait for me to say "okey-dokey".